Fish keep their bounds; humans do not

It is not easy to avoid such people, nor to guard against the harm they do, because their wickedness is deeply hidden under the guise of friendship. The Lord calls such characters ravenous wolves, appearing in garments of sheep (Matthew 7:15). Flee the varied and many-sided character; pursue truth, sincerity, simplicity. The serpent is subtle; for this reason it was condemned to crawl. The righteous man is without guile, like Jacob. For this reason the Lord settles the solitary in a home (Psalm 67:7 LXX (Hebrew 68:6)). This is the great and wide sea; there are creeping things without number, small animals with great (Psalm 103:25 LXX). Yet among them there is a wise and orderly arrangement. We cannot only find fault with fish; there are also things in them worth imitating. How is it that each kind of fish, having distributed to itself the region suited to it, does not encroach upon the others, but remains within its own boundaries? No surveyor among them divided up their dwellings; they are not marked off by walls; they are not separated by boundary stones; yet what is useful for each has been assigned to each automatically. This bay feeds certain kinds of fish, and that one others; and the kinds that multiply here are not found among others. No mountain rising with sharp peaks separates them, no river cuts off their passage, but there is a law of nature that allots to each its way of life equitably and justly according to what each needs.

But we are not like this. How could we be? We remove the ancient boundaries that our fathers set (Proverbs 22:28). We cut off land, we join house to house and field to field, so that we may take something from our neighbor (Isaiah 5:8). The sea monsters know the way of life marked out for them by nature; they have taken possession of the sea outside the inhabited regions, the desolate region of islands, where no continent stands opposite on the other side. For this reason it is unnavigable, since neither inquiry nor any need persuades sailors to venture upon it. The sea monsters, which in size resemble the greatest mountains, as those who have seen them say, have taken possession of that sea and remain within their own boundaries, harming neither the islands nor the coastal cities. So each kind, as if in cities or villages or ancient homelands, makes its dwelling in the parts of the sea assigned to it.

And some fish are migratory, as if setting out from a common council chamber for foreign territory; they all depart at a single signal. For when the appointed time of breeding arrives, different fish from different bays migrate, stirred by the common law of nature, and press on toward the northern sea. And at the time of their ascent you could see the fish united like a current, flowing through the Sea of Marmara toward the Black Sea. Who moves them? What king's command? What edicts posted in the marketplace announce the appointed time? Who are the guides? You see the divine order filling all things and extending through the smallest creatures. A fish does not oppose the law of God, and we human beings do not endure saving teachings. Do not despise fish because they are voiceless and completely without reason; rather, fear that you may be more without reason than they are, by resisting the command of the Creator. Listen to the fish, who all but utter a voice through what they do: we undertake this long journey for the continuance of our kind.